About Me

Reputability are thought leaders in the field of reputational risk and its root causes, behavioural risk and organisational risk. Our book 'Rethinking Reputational Risk' received excellent reviews: see www.rethinkingreputationalrisk.com. Anthony Fitzsimmons, one of its authors, is an authority and accomplished speaker on reputational risks and their drivers.
Reputability helps business leaders to find these widespread but hidden risks that regularly cause reputational disasters. We also teach leaders and risk teams about these risks.
Here are our thoughts, and the thoughts of our guest bloggers, on some recent stories which have captured our attention. We are always interested to know what you think too.

Thursday, 15 March 2012

It usually takes a crisis for the outside world to find out what is really going on inside a big corporation. But on 14 March, the disillusioned Greg Smith, a middle ranking banker, left Goldman with a flourish - giving an insight into Goldman Sachs for the New York Times (also covered here in the FT).

Reinforcing this picture, he reports that many leaders at Goldman apparently despise their clients: "I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as muppets, sometimes over internal email."

Making it clear that he does not accuse Goldman of anything illegal, Mr Smith concludes:

"It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don't trust you, they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn't matter how smart you are."

If Smith's narrative is right, Goldman is losing the moral compass that once inspired its alumni whilst its board claims good intentions but sets incentives driving amoral behavour. If so, what does this say of Goldman's leaders?

The most obvious options are that they are, to use their own terminology, "muppets" who don't know what is going on in the Goldman engine room; or that they are somewhere between amoral and dishonest. Neither is an attractive characterisation.

Survival for the long term becomes harder if people think you are untrustworthy or incompetent - the more so if you are untrustworthy or incompetent. The toxic track record listed by Smith makes Goldman more vulnerable to a new crisis turning into a catastrophe. And that's before thinking how angry, influential alumni, seeing their once valuable Goldman pedigrees transformed into an embarrassment, could seal Goldman's demise should they run into trouble in the future.

The question for clients is no longer "Can we do without Goldman?" It's become "Can we risk using Goldman?" If clients (or their customers) think "Goldman Sucks", it could become as risky to hire Goldmans as it is for a retailer to sell products made with slave labour.